My life in China, Part 27- Drumming

I’m a drummer. I started taking lessons when I was seven years old more than 30 years ago. When I was around thirteen, I bought my first and only drum set, a 1968 Rogers in white marine pearl, which is in my basement shamefully gathering dust as we speak. I started studying under a professional jazz drummer of some acclaim, himself trained by the great Joe Morello of David Brubeck fame. This cat played with an abundance of jazz legends and toured with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw, to name a few. He’s mostly retired now and lives in Florida, but he still gets out and swings (you can see him here).

I played in my high school jazz band and was in a heavy metal group called Oversoul (I have wide musical tastes). I was also a drum teacher with several paying students, which gave me some pocket change. By the time I graduated High School, I was a pretty good drummer, and I even planned to become a professional musician myself. I applied to various music programs, including Berklee School of Music, auditioned, and was accepted (quite proud of that). Ultimately, with a bit of soul searching and examining the prospect of taking $40+ thousand in student loans to be a starving musician, I decided not to pursue music. Still, drumming remains a passion until this day. I don’t get on the set as much as I used to, and I haven’t played in a band in more than 20 years, but I still watch my fair share of drumming videos on Youtube every night before bed, and I think back to the days when I was an ambitious and dreaming musician fondly.

Before I moved to China, I was still practicing about an hour a day, just about every day. At this point, I had no delusions of becoming a great drummer, but there’s something about pushing myself in disciplined practice as well as the primal feel of beating the skins that I couldn’t give up. After all that time and effort, it had become part of my DNA. Hence, my move to China had a massive impact on me in this realm. I brought a pair of sticks and some of my favorite books with me, but it wouldn’t be the same.

That isn’t to say that my love for drumming and music, in general, didn’t have a place in my journey. Funny enough, I brought all my CDs with me. This was 2005 and before (affordable) digital music devices, and thus, the 300+ compact disks took quite a bit of room in my luggage. You could only bring two suitcases and your carry-ons for international travel, and I was planning on living in China for six months. That means I made conscious choices to leave important things behind so I had room for my music. Funny enough, while in China, I moved my music into the digital via a hard drive, and all those CDs are still in a cupboard at my in-law’s house in Wafangdian. It’s funny how quickly things change.

Music is one thing, but I needed the visceral experience of drumming. I managed this in two ways, both thanks to my wife who understood my drumming withdrawal. The first was a traditional Chinese drum she bought me for my birthday. It was a hand drum, like a small conga, made with slats like a barrel, with an animal-skin head and iron rivets (picture above, gosh I look like a little kid). Typically, it was a drum used in parades and celebrations, but I used it to keep the beat alive in my soul. I loved that drum. Unfortunately, when we left, it was just too heavy to mail back to my in-laws and certainly too unwieldy to bring with us on our flight, so we sold it to the front desk lady. She gave it to her son, which warmed my heart a bit. At least it would help stimulate the younger generation to pursue the percussion arts.

Secondly, my wife (again) purchased a small electronic drum set. It was a far cry from the real thing and more like a toy, but it didn’t upset my neighbors as much as the actual drum and had more of the feel of a drum set. It even came with preprogrammed tunes to drum to, which I enjoyed immensely. If anything, it kept my chops from completely withering over the two years in the country.

My love for drumming and music also played a part in building some relationships. One of my first Chinese friends was a music instructor who taught Opera singing at Hebei University. He was one of the three professors, along with my wife, that I mention here who participated in my first class to its end. As drumming was such a big part of my life, I also spoke about it often with my students. They were often interested in my educational path and journey to China. As drumming encompassed some of that path, I would tell them about my love of music and how I came very close to being a professional musician. One day, one of my students came up to me after class to share that her younger brother was an aspiring drummer and that he would love to meet me. I, of course, jumped at the chance. For those not in the drumming world, drummers have a unique bond. Sometimes you can look at someone and know they’re a drummer, and I’ve built many relationships around the drum.

But in China, I found it very difficult to find anyone to talk with about drumming. Drums are expensive, and Baoding didn’t seem like a place that could afford many drummers. There were two music stores in Baoding, and although they had plenty of instruments for sale, including traditional Chinese drums, a western drum set was still something scarce. This chance to interact with someone who understood the drum’s allure seemed like a super neat experience.

I met this student, and we took a taxi to her home, where I met her brother. She had things to do, so she left me alone with this new acquaintance. His English was rough as he was in high school, but we communicated well enough. He didn’t have a drum set, but he did have a double bass drum pedal and practice pads, which I thought hilarious (they are expensive and probably not the most important thing for a new drummer to spend their money on). We also discovered that we both enjoyed the band Dream Theater and its then drummer, Mike Portnoy. So, we watched a DVD of a live performance and relished in the craft.

But, this student had a surprise for me. He had a drum teacher that lived nearby with an actual drum set! It would be one of my favorite experiences in China. We met the gentleman for lunch. He didn’t speak any English, and this high school student was not the best translator, but we made do. Anyway, the real communication happened when they brought me to the set. It was down in a dark cellar of his apartment building, in a small cement room typically used to store things like sweet potatoes, bags of rice, and dried apples. This guy turned the limited space into a drumming shrine with a beautiful Yamaha drum set and Zildjian cymbals. When he opened the metal door, I could almost hear the sounds of heaven with a divine light shining off the maple and brass.

So, we spent the afternoon drumming and exchanging musical ideas. It was fantastic. I had been away from the drum set for months, and here I was in a basement in China, playing paradiddle drum fills on an actual Yamaha drum set and generally just having a blast with new friends. I showed them some of my favorite licks, and they did the same. Were these guys any good? They were ok, especially growing up in the drumming desert that was Baoding. They couldn’t read sheet music and learned by imitation, but at least they were trying, and you had to respect that.

After our drumming session, sweaty and with fingers blistered, this gentleman offered to drive me home. The kicker was he didn’t have a car. All he had was a Vespa-like scooter and no helmet. Now, my mother is a nurse, and I heard my fair share of horror stories growing up about devastating head injuries due to riding two-wheel vehicles without head protection. This was also China, a place that is notorious for traffic deaths. But I had no idea where I was in the city. It was far on the other side of town from Hebei University, so ultimately, I didn’t have a choice. So, the three of us, yes, I said the three of us hopped on this little scooter and zipped through the dangerous streets of Baoding, weaving between cars and dodging pedestrians, bicycles, and other motorcycles. We must have looked the site- three grown men, with a tall red-head foreigner, sandwiched between, but what an experience. It was late spring and warm, and there was a real sense of youth and freedom on this new adventure.

We never met again. I don’t quite remember why. Communication, in general, was difficult, they lived far away, and it may have been towards the end of the semester. The student probably moved on, so I lost the bridge, but it was undoubtedly a rememberable experience. Wherever they are, I can’t thank them enough for their hospitality, letting a foreigner beat on their drums, and giving me my only experience on a motorcycle to this day.

One of the many joys of music is that it is a language everyone understands. You may not be able to communicate verbally, but you can still express yourself through music. I might not know the names of the drumming rudiments in Chinese, but I could play them and a Chinese drummer would immediately understand and that’s pretty neat.

Cheers!